A Post Of Thanks

Our Executive Board procured free tickets for the whole Corps to see the new documentary "Waiting for Superman". The film is directed by David Guggenheim (he also did "An Inconvenient Truth") and it is "a deeply personal exploration of the current state of public education in the U.S. and how it is affecting our children." (http://www.waitingforsuperman.com)

Five children are profiled, all of whom reminded me either of my students or myself. Most go to public schools of various sorts and all care deeply about their education. (Daisy's story was particularly moving.)

Anyways, I don't want to write to completely endorse the film, though I think people should see it to at least start discussions around public education in America. I want to write to say thank you for my own education. Many of you were and are directly involved in it and not until this year have I fully realized just how much work it takes to get a child to love learning. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for reading to me so much that I could read faster to myself than you could read to me. While I've always been a little too proud of that, it's a pretty weighty gift that took an untold amount of your patience. So thank you for all the Goodnight Moon's, American Girl chapter books, and the Little Hungry Caterpillar's. Thank you to the rest of my family for setting our education standard so high: my grandmothers who went to college even though higher education for women was not the norm; my grandfathers' Master's degrees.

Knowledge is power and with power comes responsibility. I am grateful for my education--grateful that my schools' were never falling apart, never too overcrowded, always had academic options, clubs, languages, music, art, friends. I have been so blessed, there's no other word for it. And the best part is this year, the year that pushes me to see that my background is not the norm in my country, far from it in fact. The power I've been given is being used to show me the responsibility I have--we all have--to each other and to our future. We can't push the inequalities to the background anymore. We have to act, to be responsible to our community. We can't wait for Superman.